5 Surefire Reasons Why I Think All Headlines Suck

Image obtained from analyzing my headline with CoSchedule. Credit and tears from author

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard the holy quote:

Spend 20% of your time writing and 80% creating viral headlines.

Or something like that. I may need to double-check my sources.

Well, whatever the original quote was, I’ve heard it too. But I have a problem: I just hate what headlines are becoming. So much.

Now you have to be an NLP engineer to write a headline because it must be:

• long enough
• short enough
• interesting enough
• easy enough
• powerful enough
• SEO friendly enough
• human friendly enough

… all at the same time. But somehow, as Toni Koraza perfectly summarized it in this article, they all kind of sound the same?

So even if I recognize how important nailing the skill of headline creation is, there are some reasons why I’m starting to despise most of the headlines I see.

1. Because do we need so many listicles?

Yes, I know, guilty as charged. But do we really need so many? Aren’t we able to digest information anymore if it’s not carefully split into artificial lists…